


Life on Venus

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Broken hands happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life on Venus

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted June 2004.

Life on Venus  
By Candle Beck

Things were going good. They were out of their April slump. May did right by all of them, picked up the speed of their bats, sharpened the sight of their gloves, quickened the heartbeat of their feet, and with the weather in Oakland hot and dry with clean bracing winds, the A’s were beginning to rediscover their summer again.

Mark Mulder had pitched three back-to-back complete games just a start or two ago, hadn’t lost a decision in over a month. His record was good, his ERA better, and his arm felt triple-digit warm all the time. As always accompanied this kind of early-season success, he was in a far better mood on a daily basis than would regularly be expected of him. He was swift to grin and toss an arm around their shoulders, either a head-lock or brothers-in-arms, depending on what state the night was in.

Chavez, for his part, was hitting above .270 and leading the team in homeruns and RBIs. He was the new golden boy and playing the part, and when he said things people didn’t just pretend to listen, like has a history of happening in the past. He felt worthy of the respect and affection coming from these friends of his, he felt like maybe he actually deserved all this.

The team, as a whole, was playing with grace and strength and fifteenth-inning brilliance, here as May was finally shook off their heels and June, the truer month of the season, was well-lit and awaiting them.

And then Eric Chavez broke his hand.

* * *

It wasn’t that much, really. Just an inside fastball, nothing spectacular, nothing malicious about it. Just an inside fastball and his hands out over the plate to catch up with the splitter, not realizing the ball wasn’t going to break until it was too late, and nobody is fast enough to pull back from a ninety-eight mile an hour pitch after a moment of hesitation like that. There was a snapping sound that reminded him instantaneously of walking through the woods, and then a shard of pain that made him scream.

Six weeks. Three to heal and three to re-train. Not that long, if you think about it. He could be back by the All-Star game (though he wouldn’t play in the All-Star game, but that probably would have been the case anyway). He’d be there for the second half, and there has not in recent memory existed a second half team quite like the Oakland Athletics of this generation.

It wasn’t anything catastrophic. It wasn’t breaking your leg in a playoff game and losing a year to relearning all that had once been instinct, the memory haunting behind the wide grin on Jermaine Dye’s face. It wasn’t a stress fracture in your hip when you were playing with fierce dominance in late August; Chavez wasn’t going to be watching the postseason from the bench.

Inside fastballs happen. Broken hands happen. None of this was ever beyond the realm of possibility. Chavez had been too young and too strong for too long now, and maybe somewhere he always knew he’d eventually be held accountable for the relentlessly lucky course of his life.

Probably this was always going to fall down on him; probably he should have seen it coming.

* * *

So what can you do? The team’s playing well, no one seems to miss him yet. But he’s only been out a couple of games. Everything’s gotten longer without baseball to fill in the spaces.

Chavez takes two Vicodin every night, remembering, as he puts the prescription bottle back on the shelf, the medicine cabinet in his old house, the one he shared with Mulder, crowded with painkillers and antibiotics and strange shiny white pills that claimed to rebuild bone, an odd power to have. Chavez takes his pain pills and everything gets far away. It’s not sleep, it’s not full consciousness, it’s somewhere ever-so-slightly between. It’s hard to say if he sleeps much anymore, blinking in exhaustion all the time.

The team is still in town and Chavez doesn’t have to be at the ballpark that early anymore, doesn't really have to be at the ballpark at all, and he wakes up alone, past noon with the early-afternoon light splintering through the window, making him think about cutting class in high school, minor league days off.

It’s pretty quiet and there’s a baseball game on every other television station, every team in the game on the arsenical green fields, the sightless blue of the sky. Eric eats some toast and goes to sit on the fire escape for a little while, and then he comes back and looks at himself in the mirror and says, “What can you do?” a couple of times, and then he calls his mom and ask what the weather’s like in San Diego.

You can still go home. That’s something.

* * *

San Diego was a bad idea.

Chavez realized this just as the plane took off from the San Francisco International Airport. He hadn’t even gotten there before he was regretting it, which didn’t seem like a particularly fair way to make him feel. The wheels left the runway and they rose above the water, the city at their back, the bridges spanning out like wings, and Chavez caught a glimpse of the dim banks of stadium lights circling the Coliseum, just across the bay at the foot of the hills, and at once Chavez knew that Oakland was the only place where he should be trying to recover.

It was too late, of course, and so he went home.

It wasn’t anything specific. He just wasn’t really in the mood to deal with his parents and his old hometown again, the unconditional pride he felt drowned in. He tamped it down pretty well, never let it show, but he was middle-school sullen for most of his stay there, sulking through interminable dinners with his father’s brothers on either side of him, clapping his shoulder and pulling him close to press exuberant kisses on his forehead. Everybody called him Ricky and it was difficult to stop thinking that these past few unbelievable years were anything more than a dream, no surprise to find himself waking up in his bed with the height notches in the posts, like he was seventeen again and too young to know whether this dream was a good or a bad omen.

And his hand hurt, in a very constant way.

The team was doing all right. The family had a habit of getting together once or twice a week to watch the A’s play on the big television, and they tried to get Eric to watch with them, but he brushed them off, went to the beach instead.

He didn’t need to see it. The box scores told him everything he needed to know.

None of the starting pitchers had gotten a decision since Mulder put down the Red Sox the last week of May. They each pitched lights-out and came away from it with another ND, and Chavez knew the rotation was feeling cursed, eyeing stormclouds warily, refining all their superstitions, Chavez could imagine perfectly the doubting, careful looks in their eyes as they tried to figure out what they needed to do to snap this run of uneasy halfway bad luck.

But they were scraping out runs, somehow. Pulling wins down like tearing them out of the sky, using the last of their strength. They kept winning in extras, there in Oakland before the manically loyal home crowds, this string of fiercely bright days and warm clear-skied nights. They kept walking off, crowding the plate, and these guys had made late-inning miracles an art form over the past four years, there was nothing they did better.

Chavez knew their stats like a mantra now, batting average and RBIs and ERA, moment-to-moment updated, his eyes scanning with numbers and random letters of the alphabet.

Have they been doing better since he left? Is it too early to tell? How long before it’s official that they don’t need him?

* * *

San Diego is airless and feels like the surface of another planet. It’s never been as hot as it is this year. Or maybe he’s just been spoiled by the Bay Area. The desert is like something seen through smoked glass, shimmers at the edges.

‘Life on Venus,’ Chavez thinks. ‘Life on the DL.’

He slides into Spanish an awful lot down here, not even realizing it until he walks into a Dairy Queen and tries to order a milkshake, the clerk’s face exasperated and uncomprehending.

Chavez tries not to think about baseball, but that’s not really something he can ask of himself.

He stays for three days, until he wakes up to his cell phone ringing, a yellow bird on the sill of the open window. It’s too hot to sleep under the covers, his body slick with sweat, and he rolls over, rubs his eyes, mumbles “Hello?” into the phone.

“Chavvy?” Mulder’s voice asks. Chavez half-smiles, lifts his arm to push a hand through his hair, but it’s the broken one, and he knocks himself in the head with his brace, a slight jarring ring of pain.

“How’s it going?” he answers.

There’s muffled chatter in the background where Mulder is. It’s a Sunday and everyone else in the house has gone to church, leaving Chavez alone in the already dense heat.

“Trying to have a barbecue,” Mulder says. “Do you remember where we used to keep the lighter fluid?”

Chavez thinks back to the last time they’d used the grill. August, September, sometime around then, a two-a.m. decision to make s’mores, sitting on the back patio by the pool, throwing half-melted marshmallows at each other, a smear of chocolate on Mark Ellis’s cheek, Mulder’s hand smelling like sulfur from the matches he’d been striking and flicking away all night.

“I thought it was by the green troll guy in the garage. Like, in that bucket.”

He hears Mulder move the phone away from his ear, directing someone. “Yeah, over there. No, the green troll, not—” There’s a sudden crashing sound, Mulder half-yelling in surprise before he laughs and says, “God, you’re such a klutz, dude,” and then his voice gets clearer as he says to Chavez, “Thanks, I think we found it.”

“Hopefully with no major injuries,” Chavez replies.

“Yeah,” Mulder says, then asks, “When are you coming home?”

Chavez looks towards the window. The yellow bird is gone. He can figure out his heartrate from the beat of pain in his hand.

“Tonight,” he answers, and starts thinking up excuses to tell his parents.

* * *

It’s punk, the way he’s feeling right now. It’s fucking low. It could be worse. That’s what everyone keeps telling him, it could be worse, it could be worse, until he wants to scream, “but it’s *not* worse, it’s just as bad as it is and that’s fucking bad enough.”

It’s just a broken hand. It’s nothing.

And when Chavez got home from San Diego, he went to his old house, not even bothering to stop off and get rid of his luggage first, banging on the door and hollering at Mulder’s window, rewarded when the pitcher stuck a head out, his wet hair spiky and messed up in the back, and grinned, asked, “Are you looking to move in here again? I knew you’d come crawling back.”

Chavez rolled his eyes, kicked at his duffel bag. “Nah, just got in from the airport. I was thinking you should probably buy me a welcome home beer.”

Mulder laughed, waving a hand at the door. “Hey, man, anything for my buddy the gimp. Door’s unlocked.”

Chavez came in, thumbing through the small stack of mail on the table, a Post-it note with his name scrawled on it stuck to the top of the pile. He’s still getting a lot of mail to this address; a lot of people don’t know he’s moved on.

Mulder emerged from the kitchen, handing the other man a beer. “Where’s the rookie?” Chavez asked as they went into the living room, his eyes skimming across the knot of sneakers on the floor, the canting tower of magazine against one wall, the well-worn general chaos of guys living together outside the traditional bounds of hygiene and sanitation.

Crooking a grin, Mulder answered, “Picking up my dry-cleaning.”

Chavez laughed out loud. “Jesus, I knew I shoulda warned him about moving in here with you. Kid’s too green to know when to tell you to fuck off.”

“Hey, that’s how I like ‘em,” Mulder claimed. He was quiet for a moment, scratching the label of the bottle with his thumb. “How was home?”

Chavez shrugged, nervously tapping the side of his short cast on the arm of the couch. “It was okay. It’s just . . . it’s always kinda weird, going back, huh?”

Mulder nodded. “That’s a true story, man. Every time I go home, my folks have done something new to my room. I’m always just, like, leave it *alone*, please, but they don’t seem to care.”

Chavez smiled, feeling tired and a little annoyed that he still had to get home tonight, so much easier when it was just a stumble down the hallway, yelling to Mulder through the common wall of their bedrooms, figuring out what time they would wake up tomorrow, setting their alarm clocks and then one of them calling, “Night, dude!” and the other echoing it, the last thing that happened every night.

Mulder swung his knee over, nudged Chavez’s leg. “And how’s that uncooperative motherfucker?” he asked, nodding to Chavez’s wrapped hand.

Chavez sighed. “Oh, not so bad.” The plastic brace and thick bandages of the cast had already become part of his arm, the way his glove did after a quick fielding warm-up.

Mulder glared good-naturedly at Chavez’s arm. “Thought we had an agreement that we weren’t gonna get hurt this year. Coulda sworn I got your solemn oath.” There was just the suggestion of a grin on Mulder’s face, a trace of seriousness in his eyes.

Shrugging, Chavez picked at the cast, the edges of the bandages. “Yeah, man, we did. I don’t know what happened.” His smile was rueful, but he’d already planned his responses, he’d known what Mulder would say, their ease almost scripted as they tossed one-liners back and forth, this long-way-around manner of getting to where they were going.

Mulder touched his hand lightly to the plastic bit of the cast, clicking and pattering. “Coulda at least made it to the break. Coulda at least given it a shot.” Mulder was still feinting that smile, and Chavez could only shrug again.

Mulder fiddled with his cast for a moment longer, studying it like he was making sure it was properly affixed, and then cut his eyes up briefly, moving back and saying evenly, “Well, we’ll try to keep it close for you until you come back. Don’t want you to get all lazy ‘cause we’ve got a ten game lead by the end of July.”

Automatically, Chavez reached out and knocked his knuckles briskly on the coffee table, Mulder smirking at him.

Chavez thought for a little while before he spoke next, trying to figure out if bringing this up was a good idea. He decided it pretty much wasn’t, decided that he pretty much didn’t care, and swallowed before he asked, “So, what’s it . . . what’s it like coming back? After being out? I mean, do you . . . after you’ve missed so much . . . seems like it would be . . . difficult. To get back in the game.”

Chavez’s forehead lined. He was feeling slow and inarticulate, unable to say what he wanted to.

Mulder just looked at him quietly, not letting the surprise show in his face, his eyes working quickly, picking out the important parts and tracing his conclusions, his jaw tightening, his mouth thin.

“It’s not like it was with me,” Mulder said, his voice hard. “I left at the end of the season, I never came back. Not ‘til spring training, same as you guys. I started fully healed, I didn’t try and finish rehab while chasing the pennant. And you’ve been hurt during the season before, you know what it is.”

Chavez shook his head fiercely. “Not for this long. Not . . . not now.” He pushed his good hand through his hair. “I mean, it’s different now. The way you were pitching last year . . . you were running away with it, man. They told you all your life that you could do it, and you were doing it, you were as good as anybody I’ve ever seen, and for that to happen then . . .”

He pulled his shoulders up. Mulder was sitting back, his face calm, waiting for Chavez to finish. Chavez sighed. “I just got this feeling. Like . . . like maybe we’re about to be the best we’ll ever be. I feel like we’re so close . . . and then shit like this starts happening.” His eyes were bright but his voice was struggling to hold even as he continued, “I know the story of minor injuries, dude. I’ve seen it a million times. You start getting hurt . . . you sign a contract, you start getting hurt. You live on the DL,” ‘you live on Venus,’ he thought, which was a kind of strange thing to think, “and every time you come back you’re counting games until you go down again.”

It was a step too far, Chavez had to assume, because Mulder’s face went briefly stark and clean with anger, as he had looked sometimes in the dugout at the end of last season, when every September day was so important and when Harden was pitching in his spot in the rotation and bleeding runs like a slow wound, Mulder’s face would get like that, not frustrated, not disappointed, but just so angry at the whole stupid injustice of it, that it was in no way *fair*, because he had been a good man and a good friend and his father was proud of him and shit like this wasn’t supposed to *happen* to people like him, it wasn’t fucking *right*.

It was there then gone again, just quick enough to scare the hell out of Chavez, but then Mulder breathed out and fought something down and said with clear assurance, his voice low, “But that’s not gonna be you. I swear to God, you don’t lose what you’ve got. You get hurt, you get better. And that’s all that happens. We didn’t come this far to get beat by a fucking obnoxious fifth metacarpal.”

Chavez had to laugh at that, had to tilt his head back and remind himself that right now was for nothing but the slow stitch of bone marrow, right now was for nothing but rebuilding.

And what can you do?

Get drunk.

It seemed like the best response, on the whole. It was a conclusion reached swiftly and unanimously, briefly debated when the question of who would go to the liquor store was raised, concerns alleviated with Chavez’s timely memory of a stashed bottle of Scotch in the crawlspace under the stairs, well-justified in breaking out the good stuff, because soon he would have to put on a different uniform for the first time in four years and talent is never resurrected for those who go about the mourning process half-assed.

Crosby came home at some point, his arm rustling with dry-cleaning bags, Mulder off-handedly thanking him and asking for his change in the same sentence, Chavez snickering behind his hand as Crosby blushed and dug into his pocket.

The rookie sat with them awhile, kept explaining very seriously, “This is how we do it in Long Beach,” before knocking back double shots like they were water. After an hour or so, Crosby, not yet up to pace with his teammates, two months into the season (‘talk about a slow start,’ Chavez thought idly, killing the last of the whiskey straight from the bottle), said his well-mannered good nights and went to bed, back to the room that had been Chavez’s for so long.

As had a tendency to happen, Chavez looked up and it was one in the morning and there was a day game tomorrow. Today. Whatever. For Mulder, there was a game today.

“Guess I’m about to call a cab,” Chavez said, rubbing his palm across his face.

Mulder pulled his head up from where it had dropped against the back of the couch. “You think?” he mumbled, his eyes hazy with exhaustion.

“Seems like the thing to do,” Chavez replied, pulling out his wallet. “Except I have no money. Shit.”

Mulder let his head fall back again, his eyes closed, waving his hand dismissively. “Fuck it. Stay here. This lousy couch isn’t doing nothing for nobody. And you can ride in with me tomorrow.”

The couch Chavez probably knew as well as he knew anything. Everything in this house was so familiar to him. He smiled. “Cool. Thanks.”

Mulder nodded, standing up and stretching, a huge yawn as he beckoned for Chavez to follow him. “No problem. Come get a pillow and stuff.”

Mulder went rummaging in the closet in his bedroom, not bothering with the light, which had been broken when Chavez moved out and most probably remained so, pulling down a soft pile of blankets and pillows, holding out the armful to his friend.

Chavez moved forward, but it was dark and it’d been awhile since he’d lived here, and he walked right into the dresser, pinning his broken hand in its laughably defenseless bandage-and-brace cast between his body and the edge of the dresser for a glaring moment of agony, his eyes failing as a gasp ripped out of him and he fell to his knees against the pain, his arm cradled to his chest, his eyes shut and his head down.

He might have passed out, a little bit. Only for a second, and probably a good thing, because the last thing he remembered was intense and nauseating pain, but still, he’s a major league ballplayer and he’s supposed to be tough, so if anyone asked, he’d tell them he was awake for all of it, though actually he didn’t really come to until Mulder’s hand was on his back and Mulder’s voice was saying, “Dude, what the fuck, dude,” a touch of something frantic in his words.

Chavez filed back into himself, breathing deep and willing the pain out of his hand, each moment clearer and sharper until he was recovered enough to stand when Mulder said helplessly, “Here, let’s . . . you oughta lie down or something,” pulling him up by his good arm and carefully guiding him to the bed.

Lying down was a pretty good idea, it turned out, although it made Mulder look kind of disembodied, hovering above him, until the pitcher sat beside Chavez and fluttered his hands doubtfully on the bed.

“Calm down, it’s okay,” Chavez mumbled, the pain fading to a steady tolerable point where he almost didn’t mind it so much. “Just bumped it.”

Mulder widened his eyes. “You straight passed out, man,” he said, near to anger. “Jesus, you looked like you were about to die ‘cause it hurt so bad.”

Chavez shook his head, pressure behind his eyes. “Nah, just a little lightheaded. Little drunk. You can’t talk. You pass out like it’s going out of style.”

Mulder didn’t look like he really believed that, saying sharply, “You gotta be careful. You gotta not walk into the furniture, I think that would be a good start.”

Chavez snorted, let his eyes drift close. Easy enough to lie on Mulder’s bed with his legs hanging off the side, the way sound bent in this room so that the humming of Mulder’s computer was audible but the street noise wasn’t, how Mulder’s sheets always smelled clean, even before he had a rookie to do his laundry for him.

Something brushed his stomach, and Chavez’s eyes came open, looked up at the other man. Mulder wasn’t touching him, just staring down at his hands, but the pitcher asked quietly, his face unreadable, “Are you scared, man?”

Chavez wanted to twist his fingers in the sleeve of Mulder’s T-shirt, something to occupy him while he searched for an answer to that, but all he had was his broken hand and Chavez’s voice cracked a bit as he said, “Yeah. Yeah.”

Mulder nodded and looked away, his throat ducking as he swallowed, and then he looked back, his eyes swiftly dark, and reached out to place his hands on Chavez’s shoulders, lightly holding him down, and Chavez blinked up at him as Mulder leaned over and whispered against his throat, “Don’t be.”

It was all pretty confusing, and then Mulder’s mouth was on his neck, wet and hot, open against his pulse, and Chavez gasped, in strange recognition, understanding, ‘oh of course of course,’ and Mulder's hand was on his stomach, tunneling under his shirt, Mulder’s fingertips dashing up his ribs.

Chavez pressed the flat of his palm against Mulder’s back, his splinted hand thrown out uselessly, Chavez touched the flattened hair at the back of Mulder’s head, tilted the other man’s head up with his fingers light on the base of his skull, and very carefully caught Mulder’s mouth with his own, taking his time and not forgetting anything that he had ever learned, because this was not a time to be falling down on the job.

Mulder made an indistinct noise against his mouth, and shifted to deepen the contact even more, half his weight atop Chavez, which he didn’t really mind, oddly, and Mulder was laughing, his hand spread out on the curve of the rib-bones around Chavez’s side, under his shirt, and Chavez momentarily felt strong again, untouched, never broken.

* * *

Well, really, what did you expect? You can’t take baseball away from a man just as the heart of summer is beginning to show and then expect him to act rationally. You can’t tell him to live on Venus without letting him find some new ways to breathe.

Interleague had started. It was the Reds during the week, and the Pirates over the weekend, the last two series of this epically long home-stand. Mulder was up for the second game of the set, and Chavez got back the results of an MRI he’d had done at a check-up a few days before, was now told he had probably eight weeks of recovery to look forward to, he’d be lucky to get back before August.

Minor injury. Half the season, and in what world is such a thing known as minor?

Chavez awoke in his old house with a piece of paper taped to his forehead. Briefly thinking he was going blind, staring out through the white, he realized the true nature of the thing and pulled it down, read the note in Mulder’s hand.

‘Hey, bro. I’ve got some shit to do in the city, but I’ll be back to take you to the game, if you wanna hang around. Or else get the rookie to drive you home. He owes me a favor.’

And Mulder had not just signed the note, but actually autographed it, probably not even thinking twice about it, that familiar illegible scrawl the most natural thing for him to put down on paper.

It was just as well. Chavez hadn’t taken his pain pills the night before, his hand was close to wailing.

He pulled Crosby off the internet and into a pair of flipflops to be driven home, heading directly for the medicine cabinet, idly hoping that he didn’t fall asleep in the dugout today.

He was gonna maybe think about what had happened a little bit, but found that the topic didn’t really hold his attention. It seemed fairly unremarkable, fitting right in with this bizarre world where his blessed right hand could be of no good to him. Stuff clearly didn’t make sense, these days. So whatever had gone on between him and Mulder (which he wasn’t actually completely clear on, having been pretty hammered, just remembering snatches, tastes, pictures of the moment), it didn’t have to make sense either.

Fair enough.

And that day he watched Mulder pitch and neither of them said a word about it, neither of them even shifted a wink, they just laughed and grinned and shoved each other around like always, and he hit one-armed grounders to Esteban German and Marco Scutaro, yelling back and forth in Spanish until one of the trainers hollered from the dugout to get off the goddamn field, Eric, before you break your other arm.

He walked out to his car with Mulder, and didn’t invite Mulder to come hang out, didn’t wait for Mulder to invite him, because you can’t plan something like this, no more than bones can plan to fracture, or unthrown baseballs can plan to streak inside.

Mulder called to him as he walked away across the parking lot, “I’ll see you tomorrow, man,” and Chavez thought that this was a time in his life that would be remembered very well someday, this was a time in his life when they said that to each other every single day, the only prediction they cared to make, and no span of days with that kind of certainty could ever be considered entirely lost, not now, not over something like this.

Chavez got in his car, drove home. Temperatures were rising in the East Bay. His shirt was stuck to his back; he hadn’t worn socks in a week. He ate a Popsicle on the fire escape, watched the sun set, and waited for his body to recover, waited for his strength to find its way back to him again.

THE END


End file.
